An approach based on feature models and quality criteria for adapting component-based systems

SANCHEZ, L. E.; DIAZ PACE, A.; ZUNINO, A.; MOISAN, S.; RIGAULT, J. P.

Journal of Software Engineering Research and Development

SPRINGER

Año: 2015 vol. 3 p. 1 - 30

2195-1721

Feature modeling has been widely used in domain engineering for the development and conguration of software product lines. A feature model represents the set of possible products or congurations to apply in a given context. Recently, this formalism has been applied to the runtime (re-)conguration of systems with high variability and running in changing contexts. These systems must adapt by updating their component assembly conguration at runtime, while minimizing the impact of such changes on the quality of service. For this reason the selection of a good system conguration is seen as an optimization problem based on quality attribute criteria. To this end, we propose an approach for system adaptation based on the specication, measurement and optimization of quality attribute properties on feature models. Furthermore, we describe its integration into a platform for supporting the self-adaptation of component-based systems. Feature models are annotated with quality attribute properties and metrics, and then an efficient algorithm is used to deal with the optimization problem. To illustrate the pros and cons of our approach we report on some adaptation scenarios in the context of a video surveillance system. We also compare two performance properties frame processing time and reconguration time estimated with our model against measurements obtained from the running system to show the accuracy of metrics on feature models for estimating quality attribute properties.